Jacques Attali

Professor, writer, special adviser to Frangois Mitterand from 1981 to 1990, and founder and first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 1991 to 1993, Jacques Attali is now chairman of A&A, an investment bank and private equity vehicle specializing in the development of European IT start-ups, from software to genomics. He is also founder and president of PlaNet Finance (www.planetfinance.org), an international non-profit organization that uses the Internet to fight poverty, while focusing on structuring the microfinance sector.

In 1989, Attali launched an international action program against massive floods in Bangladesh. He is a man of action and reflection. An economic theorist with degrees from the elite French "grandes ?coles," he has taught economics at several leading French universities.

Jacques Attali is the author of over thirty books on topics ranging from mathematical economy to music to novels, songs, short stories and theater plays, translated into more than twenty languages. His main work in economics and sociology has been on the main trends in human history and their use to forecast the future, in areas such as music, measure of time, medicine, property and other dimensions of human activities.

In his book Millennium, published in 1990, Jacques Attali created the concept of "nomad society" to characterize the nature of future civilization. His theory was not only a spark for the creation of the Java programming language by Bill Joy and John Gage at Sun Microsystems, but also for the titanium-clad Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain, designed by architect Frank Gehry. In 1984, Attali created Eureka, the main European program on new technologies. Jacques Attali is a brilliant and emotive speaker.

A flamboyant and candid speaker, Jacques Attali expounds great insights into the affects of globalization, the changing world order, geo-political issues and the future of Europe.  He never fails to evoke heated debates after his presentations.